Video: Applying baseline shift

Baseline shift is an often misunderstood and misused feature. Rarely would you want to do anything other than select a single character, and baseline shift it above or below its current position. For example, you'd not want to do this: select a whole line, and then baseline shift it up or below its current position. The reason you wouldn't want to do that is because, while visually you may have shifted the type up, technically its position remains where it ever was, so you're just going to confuse yourself.

Explore the numerous type options, type-related features, and type-specific preferences of Adobe InDesign. Using practical, real-world examples, instructor and designer Nigel French dissects the anatomy of a typeface and defines the vocabulary of typography. The course moves from the micro to the macro level, addressing issues such as choosing page size, determining the size of margins, adjusting number columns, and achieving a clean look with baseline grids. This course takes you from laying out a page to delving into the hows and whys of typography.

Topics include:

Understanding text threads and text flow methods in InDesign

Using Copy and Paste vs. Place

Choosing and combining typefaces

Understanding leading and how it relates to type size and column width

Comparing points, picas, and ems

Learning the proper use of white space and break characters

Understanding the finer points of kerning and tracking

Working with punctuation, special characters, ornaments, and ligatures

Applying baseline shift

Baseline shift is an often misunderstood and misused feature.Rarely would you want to do anything other than select a single character, andbaseline shift it above or below its current position.For example, you'd not want to do this:select a whole line, and then baseline shift it up or below its current position.The reason you wouldn't want to do that is because, while visually you may haveshifted the type up, technically its position remains where it ever was,so you're just going to confuse yourself.

If you do need to adjust the spacing between paragraphs, then we have leading,and we also have inter-paragraph spacing: the space before and space after, which wewill be dealing with in coming movies.So I'm going to make sure that the baseline shift for this is returned to 0.There is the option for baseline shift.Now, here is how you might want to use baseline shift.I have surrounded the word Baseline, which is in all uppercase, with parentheses.Now, because it's in all uppercase, visually the parentheses do not reallysurround the letters.

The letters have no descenders.So optically it looks like the parentheses are a little bit too low,so that's when I might want to add a little bit of baseline shift, and I can dothat right here using the control panel, or I can do it with the keyboardshortcut. The keyboard shortcut for baseline shift is Option+Shift andAlt+Shift, and the up arrow to go up, or down arrow to go down.How much you go up or down is determined in your Units andIncrements preferences.

So I'm going to just take a quick look at that first, and I've got it set to 1 point.In fact, I might want to make that a little bit less; half a point.So now Option+Shift, Alt+Shift, and up arrow, and I'll just nudge that up a bit,and I note that I've gone to 4.5 points.I could do to the same with this one, but it might actually be easier just toselect that, and type in 4.5.So there we now visually have the parentheses surrounding the text.

The same is often true of telephone numbers, especially if you're using thedefault numbering style, and in this case, we are using the default numberingstyle Tabular Lining figures, where all of the figures are at the cap height.The parentheses may not visually surround the numerals, and you might want tojust shift them up a fraction.This might be something useful to do on a business card.Obviously, you wouldn't want to labor too hard over this for continuous reading copy.But there we now have the parentheses surrounding the numerals.

Another case for a baseline shift, where we are using some sort of fancy drop cap feature.Now, you might expect this kind of problem to be addressed by the feature in thedrop caps called Scale for Descenders, but in fact, it's not.We have character collision going on here, and Scale for Descenders, while itmight work with some characters, is not working with this F.So here we need a bit of baseline shift.

I'm going to select that character, and I'm going to use the keyboard shortcutagain, Shift+Option or Shift+Alt, and the up arrow, and we are just going to nudgethat up to about there.And a third possible usage would be to create some sort of visual representationof the word that you're working with.So it's the visual equivalent of an onomatopoeia.So maybe I'll select this character, and I'll just nudge it up fraction, like that,so the word now looks like what it is.

A fourth use of baseline shift, and one I am not going to address here, but will be addressing in a later a movie, is when you're putting type on a circle.It's a very specialized use of baseline shift, but when we come to work with typeon a path, we'll see how it can improve the look of type around a circle.

Find answers to the most frequently asked questions about InDesign Typography .

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The exercise files provided aren't working in my version of InDesign (CS4, CS5, or CS5.5). What should I use?

This course was recorded using InDesign CS6. For InDesign users working with CS4, CS5, or CS5.5, IDML files are provided.

A: We added 18 new movies, primarily in the "Using Typekit" and "Type Treatments and Effects" chapters. These movies describe new and enhanced typography features in the latest release of InDesign CC, and are indicated by the "(CC 2014.1)" tag in their names.

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